used TH-50PZ700U for $600 or new TH-P50S2

As a PZ700U owner, i say definitely get the S2 instead. It's got a WAY better panel that's a huge improvement over the old PZ700U. The S2 is NeoPDP and has better colors, better contrast, much better whites, much better black levels, uses much less power, and the screen is WAY WAY brighter. And a new TV will have factory warranty.

The PZ700U was Panasonic's first 1080p model and while people were impressed with it, there were a LOT of complaints about how dim the panel is (it's the dimmest plasma i've ever seen by far), and the whites are dirty and gray and got worse when the whole screen was filled with bright content. The black levels were considered good back then, but the current models are a huge improvement.

I would not buy that used PZ700U, unless you can get it for a few hundred bucks and are willing to settle for grealtly inferior PQ and no warranty instead of paying $800 for something much better.

And just know that these are Maximum power draw ratings - the actual real-world energy consumption is much lower (my Plasmas average about 60% of the maximum stated in the specs according to my Kill-A-Watt meter). But yeah, the new ones are pretty energy efficient. My 46G10 averages less consumption than my old 2003 32" Tube TV did.



The Panasonic's VGA input is limted to 768p so it sucks anyway. I briefly connected my PZ700U to my PC to play around with it and it looked poor. You're much better off adding a new HDMI equipped video card (or DVI with HDCP), then you can send full 1920x1080p to the TV and it will look fabulous. HDMI cards are getting pretty cheap now.